The Packers' zone blocking scheme is off to a slow start for the fourth time in as many years, leaving Ryan Grant with little room to run. Evan Siegle/Press-Gazette

This must be galling for coach Mike McCarthy, who seemed to have everything in place to start the 2009 season with an explosive and relatively balanced offense.

After all, the Packers are in their fourth season in his zone-blocking run scheme. Four of his starting offensive linemen are in at least their third year, and the other, right guard Josh Sitton, is in his second. Halfback Ryan Grant is healthy and practiced all offseason. All the techniques and reads should be ingrained in the principals.

Then, in training camp, McCarthy put in extra time on the run game to develop a tougher identity on both sides of the ball.

And yet, in the Packers’ 1-1 start, their running backs are averaging 3.5 yards per carry and 57.5 yards per game. The offensive line hasn’t been any better than the last three years, and Grant hasn’t looked much different than last season, when he was weakened by a hamstring injury and saw his average per carry dip to 3.9 yards from 5.1 yards in 2007.

But that start is on par with McCarthy’s first three seasons and keeps alive questions about the wisdom of basing his run game on the Alex Gibbs zone-blocking system.

In 2006, McCarthy’s first year as coach, the Packers had a below-average run game — they finished No. 23 in rushing yards and No. 21 in yards allowed per carry — and were bad early. To be fair, McCarthy had a less talented roster learning a radically new run-blocking system with three rookies making a combined 38 starts on the offensive line. So it’s no surprise his three halfbacks — Ahman Green, Vernand Morency and Noah Herron — averaged 3.3 yards per carry and 78.8 yards per game in the first four weeks of the regular season.

In 2007, the Packers discovered a viable run game when the little-known Grant got his shot at halfback against Denver in the seventh game, but up to that point their run blocking ranged from mediocre to horrible. In the first four games, Brandon Jackson, DeShawn Wynn, Grant and Morency combined to average 2.7 yards per carry and 54.2 per game.

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Last year, they started a little better, but still slowly, and finished only in the middle of the pack (No. 17 in rushing yards per game and No. 18 in yards per carry). In the first four games, Grant, Jackson and Kregg Lumpkin averaged 3.9 yards a carry and 93.5 yards per game.

To be sure, we’ve seen only a snippet of the season, and things will change in the next three months, perhaps even drastically. But only 115 yards rushing by running backs in two games still is borderline astonishing for a team that’s been building for this season for three years and carries high aspirations after a seemingly successful training camp.

When McCarthy became the Packers’ coach in 2006, he brought with him Jeff Jagodzinski, a Gibbs protégé, to teach Gibbs’ distinct and idiosyncratic branch of the zone-blocking scheme.

Gibbs, whom McCarthy worked with in Kansas City in 1993 and 1994, had a track record of success, especially in Denver (1995-2003) and then Atlanta (2004-06). In both stops, he was allowed to fully implement his comprehensive run scheme that emphasizes smaller, quicker offensive linemen, extensive cut blocking, and decisive one-cut running by the backs.

But considering no one running Gibbs’ system has duplicated his success, maybe there’s something about it that’s too dependent on Gibbs himself.

In fact, McCarthy has moved a little away from the scheme with personnel selection and play calling in the last year and a half. Perhaps he should consider moving further and giving it a secondary role as the season goes on.

Yes, he’s spent more than three years training his players for this scheme. But his decision last offseason to move bigger players into new starting spots on the offensive line — Jason Spitz at center and Sitton at right guard — is evidence he didn’t like what he was getting before. Maybe it’s time to go a step further.

Last week in their loss to Cincinnati, the Packers rushed for 89 yards, but 43 came on scrambles by quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Grant was the only other ball carrier, and he gained a paltry 46 yards on 14 carries (3.3-yard average). It was bad enough that McCarthy abandoned the run game in the second half — Grant had only three carries after intermission.

Tellingly, one of Grant’s best runs, an 8-yarder in the second quarter, came when left guard Daryn Colledge pulled and helped collapse the right side of the line on a power run, not a zone run.

Yes, the Packers can and probably will recover to at least run the ball OK. But they’re at a point where OK isn’t good enough if they want to be a top team. Without Alex Gibbs on their coaching staff, the zone scheme hasn’t delivered.